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This in HPR episode 19141 entitled, Was in my case, and in part of the series, Was in my toolkit.

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It is posted my name, Morris, and in about 33 minutes long.

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The summary is, I'm a fountain pen enthusiast, here's Was in my pen case.

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This episode of HPR is brought to you by an honest host.com.

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Get 15% discount on all shared hosting, with the offer code HPR15, that's HPR15.

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Bit your web hosting that's honest and fair at an honest host.com.

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Hello, my name's Dave Morris, and I've got a show today which I'm calling what's in my case.

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To be honest, what I'm talking about is pens and stationary and that's everything,

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particularly fountain pens. The reason I'm calling it what's in my case is because

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I've recently bought a leather pen case from China, which I bought through eBay,

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and it's where I transport my favorite fountain pens when I do that.

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So I've been a bit of an enthusiast with regard to pens and stationary and stuff.

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Pretty much all my life I think. I think it must run in families because my son's

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ought to an enthusiast of these things, and so is my daughter to a lesser extent.

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Though she loves writing in journals and notebooks and that sort of stuff, she always got

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loads of those. But the pen side of it, my dad also was an enormous enthusiast for all

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of these things. You could always know what to buy him for his birthday or Christmas, anything pen

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or pencil or paper related, and he'd be happy. Anyway, I thought I'd share this stuff with you

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on HPR because I've encountered a number of people throughout my career and I've worked in

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IT. So I've met a lot of, I don't know how to put it, Geeks, I suppose, is the way to put it.

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People who really enjoy working in the IT field and so many of them seem to really have an

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enthusiasm for pens, paper, ink writing, and that whole thing. I think it probably goes with the

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outlook, the mindset. So the reason I think I like doing this sort of stuff is when I was at school

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round about age seven or eight, that would have been in the mid 1950s. We were taught to write with ink

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pens as a transition from using pencils. The school I was at had a supply of dip pens and

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nibs and ink and blotting paper in order to facilitate this. The pens are quite primitive. They

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just had a wooden shaft, like a sort of pencil type of thing, with a metal nib holder on the end

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into which a nib could be inserted. And if you had a broken or damaged nib, you'd just go on

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again, another one. The nib you got was fairly scratchy thing that needed a fair bit of care to use.

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Otherwise it's dug into the paper and made a mess. We each got a sheet of blotting paper

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to mop up ink spills and to block the work we've done so we didn't smudge it. And each desk we had

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in the school had a hole in it for an ink well. You'll still see them in sort of antique shops

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and stuff, I guess. And in it you've fitted in our case anyway, a white ceramic open top ink well.

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Had a fairly small opening, you could fit the pen in, but it didn't help to stop the ink

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evaporating too quickly. A lot of the desks not all, but a lot had a sort of brass slider thing that

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covered over the ink well to stop it drying out when we weren't doing writing. And the

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class would always have a designated ink monitor whose job it was to fill these ink wells.

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Every week maybe I can't remember the frequency and of a large stone bottle full of ink.

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It's amazing and you think about it. It's seven or eight year olds splashing around ink with

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this sort of abandon, but it seemed to work. The color of the ink we got was always blue black.

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I don't know what that was sort of the regulation color or something. I have no idea, but that's what

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it was. We were taught to write using a cursive writing and we followed the teachings of

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a thing of Victorian. I've got notes in the in the show notes there, a links there.

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And her name was Marian Richardson. Many, many kids of that era would have learned

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Marian Richardson writing. I think it taught us good writing habits. Didn't really feel like

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at the time. It just felt like another imposition. But I think it did do good things for us.

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When I got to high school later it was expected we'd write with either with a ballpoint pen which

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were just coming into fashion or preferably we'd use a phantom pen. And phantom pens are quite cool in

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those days. A lot of the kids had them and there was a lot of comparison and rivalry about

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what pen you had and who had the better one and that sort of thing. Not so much the writing

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which is the pens. I think the the ritual of buying or being bought a phantom pen was a sort of

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right of passage as you moved on to high school from what in those days was called junior school

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in England or I lived. Anyway I guess all this stuff made me like writing with a phantom pen.

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And of course as I said before my experiences are will be shared with many people who are of

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my sort of age and older. It'd be through the UK school system. And speaking to people from other

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countries I find quite a lot of Europeans have had similar experiences. Perhaps later on in time

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than I did. So why do people like writing this way? And a lot of them do. I think there's quite a

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lot I could say here but I won't go into a huge list of reasons but just to say briefly that

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if you use a phantom pen it can be generally more comfortable to use for longer periods when

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you're writing things by hand. I know people tend not to write by hand as much these days as they

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used to. keyboard skills are regarded as being more important but there are still times when

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writing by hand can be can be good. You keep a diary, you keep a journal, those types of things

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right letters to people. There are many nip styles so you can find one that suits your writing

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and can be enjoyable to use. It can take a little while to find exactly the one that you want

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admittedly but once you have you can have a pen which you really enjoy using which will last

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you your life and using a phantom pen can generally be more economical. There can be a higher

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cost to start up with when you buy the pen and get the one of the right nip. Maybe you've tried

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a few long the way. It cost a bit. You can get some quite good value ones but the point is that

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you don't have to throw the pen away in by another one. You can just refill it from your

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from your bottle of ink and a bottle of ink can last years and years. I recently finished one

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from school and that's a that must be a good 40 years that that bottle has been around.

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Nowadays there's also a novelty value in using one. It's also becoming a bit more cool I think

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it's some respects and it gives a certain error of gravitas to if you assign something with

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the phantom pen or if you use one in a meeting or something like that. Not sure that's a big

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plus. Anyway there is very much a resurgence in the interest in phantom pens and I've pointed

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to various links in my notes supporting that. There's a bit of terminology around phantom pens

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that you might not be aware of. First of all a phantom pen is a pen with a nip through which

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liquid ink flows and it's got an ink reservoir that differentiates it from the sort of dip pens

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that I was talking about earlier. The reservoir is usually refillable although there are some

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disposable pens that use just use up the ink inside them and chuck it. The nip is the

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writing part as you don't let's gather and it's usually metal although they have had plastic ones

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in the past. Not very good but have used them and they have different tip sizes bearing from

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extra fine to to broad and this is a variety of shapes very wide variety actually but

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will not go into a lot detail there. The pen nip is piece of metal usually with a small blob

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on the end which actually comes in contact with the paper and it's usually divided into two.

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There's a split down the middle. Sometimes with the breather hole in it and the split

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makes the two halves move in relation to one another as you press down on the pen and it also

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helps the ink to flow down to the tip of the nip. These two pieces that you find are called the

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tines, T-I-N-E. Don't go through this whole list. There's a list of you to refer to or just

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there's anything in particular that I mentioned I'll try and refer back to the list. So I thought

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what I'd do is just go through my pen collection. I'm not a very I'm not a heavy collector of these

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things. I have very few I have about 19 usable pens at the moment and I use maybe six on a regular

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basis so I'll just talk about my top six. I might style of writing seems to suit a fine nib. So I have

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a fairly small handwriting. So I tended to buy nibs classed as fine or extra fine. The pens

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it's originated in Japan tend to have finer nibs than European pens. So one marked as medium

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from a Japanese manufacturer is similar to a European fine.

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So going through the list of pens then, my first one and these are sort of ranked in order

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of preference I guess. So my top number one should have done a countdown to no nibs. You probably

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don't care either way. Anyway it's a Pelican. Pelican I think is where you'd pronounce because

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it's a German pen. The one I have is a classic range M215 with a sort of diamond or rhombus pattern

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on the side. And that would give them to be about my son for Christmas 2012. So what I've done

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in each of these cases is there are three pictures of the pen. There's one with the pen just

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with its cap on so you can get a general idea of it. There's the same pen with the cap removed

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so you can you can see it sort of general structure on cap. And then I do a close-up of the nibs

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so you can get an idea of that. I finish with an example of what the writing looks like. Obviously

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it's my handwriting so it's nothing generic but just to give you some idea of how it looks when

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you write with the pen like this. So the one I've got is an extra fine nib, writes really beautifully

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and smoothly, ink flow is great. That's one of the features of a phantom pen cheaper ones

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tend to to skip. They don't the ink flow is not so good. Sometimes you can resolve that. You can

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clean them out and work on the nib do things for the nib to make the flow better.

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The pen, this Pelican has a metal body and cap so it's quite strong. The clip, there's the characteristic

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of this brand of pen has a sort of look of a pelican with a pelican's bill. If you look at it

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very carefully. It's fairly small. It's not a big pen. It's operated with a piston. Now my

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terminology list explained a little bit about what pistons are but basically it's a

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knob at the end of the barrel that you turn and it moves a small piston up and down the inside of

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barrel which will suck up ink. I'll push it out if that's what you want to do. But in this particular

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case it's integrated into the pen. You can't see the piston mechanism and but there is a small

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viewing window in the barrel and you can see how much ink is currently in the pen. So this is quite

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a large German company Pelican which makes a number of pens which vary quite a lot in terms

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of price. This is an example of a manufacturer that does produce some pretty expensive pens

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right at the top of their range. So it's not a type of pen I'm going to buy many more of

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this I get very rich since pretty unlikely. So my number two example is from a company

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TWSBI that everybody pronounces Twisbee and it's the eco model. Twisbee is a Taiwanese company

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and the letters stand to something that I'm not really sure about because I've seen various

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explanations of it and I'm not sure which one is right. Anyway the eco is one is a new model

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which I bought for myself July this year 2015 and it's the lowest price one in there in the range

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but it's quite nicely you can see from the pictures that it's a transparent pen with a non-transparent

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cap. It's type pen called a demonstrator which is a thing explained in my list of terminology.

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I bought the extra fine nib for this and it's just really nice. It's a piston action pen

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and the piston is operated by a knob at the end of the barrel as usual and it's made of acrylic resin

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and this particular one is remarkable in as much that it can be completely disassembled

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and maintained by itself. It actually comes with in a box with a little plastic spanner

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which lets you undo the parts of the pen. So even instructions are how to do it

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and it's also got a small jar of silicon grease which you can put onto the

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piston to help it to move as pistons can get a bit jammed up over time. It writes really really

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well it's very fine nib. It's very good. It's a slight scratching as to the nib but it's hard to get

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away from that with a very very fine nib. It's a really nice pen to use. So my next one is

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from an American company called Nudeless. They actually primarily make ink but they

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make a range of pens as well. I've got two of these Nudeless pens but the one I'm talking about here

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is when I like the best. It's fairly cheap pen. It should have said that the twist bee was not

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all that expensive around 40 pounds I think it was. The Nudeless pen I'm talking about is

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called the Conrad model and the color is a fairly dark blue which has got the name and sometimes

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the names are a little bit fancy. Hudson Bay Fathom I call it. It's a resin material which is different

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from many others. It's not acrylic. It's got an odd smell to it but that seems to be a silly

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feature actually but there are other there are a full acrylic pens in the Conrad range but

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they're about twice the price of this one and this was about 17 pounds and I bought it. It's a medium

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fine nib and it's unusual in the split between the two times. There's no breather hole in it and the

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split extends the entire length of the nib which allows the nib to bend more when you write

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over. It's called a flex nib. That means that the width of the lines it produces varies with

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the amount of pressure that you apply and people like to do use this for doing caligraphic

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effects in copper plate handwriting and that type of thing. I don't do that myself but I find

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it very smooth and pleasant nib to use. Piston filler but on this case you have to undo a little

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cap at the end to reveal a node knob that operates the piston. It's a transparent pen and I didn't

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say that hopefully you can see that from the pictures. My writing sample is using the other ones

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have used a black ink which I quite like but in this one I put a blue ink and it's some

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they can see an example of it's use. So the noodle is ink company based in the USA and it's

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slightly idiosyncratic and quite a fun company I think. The pen boxes just a little cardboard

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boxes come with pictures drawn on them from an original that it was done by the owner of the company

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I think and they particularly need the ink to a good value. The next one is called the reform 1745.

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Now this was another birthday present from my son in 2012. It's a small pen and I

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assume the nib is a fine one but there's no indication it doesn't come with any documentation

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anything but I'll come to that in a minute. It's a piston filler within with a knob on the the end

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as you can see in the pictures. There's also an ink viewing window in the barrel. It's green,

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darkest green and black with a copper colored cover of copper colored pieces on it the clip

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and the ring at the bottom of the cap and it's got a two-tone nib which is nice. Now the

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that particular one tends to gushing rather a lot you can see from the writing that's quite

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lot of ink on the deposited on the paper which is you know it's good and bad. It'll get less

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so as you use it it's only recently been filled this one I think. Now the interesting story

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about these things is the colors are actually the colors of the the city of Berlin. It's

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they were originally manufactured in Germany in the 1930s and 40s and they became particularly

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popular with school children. Some stories say that they were made for school children not clear

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whether that is the case. They were at one time in that sort of era reported to be the best

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selling pens in the world and manufacturing continued into the 1970s. Their stories of Nazi

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officers being captured during the Second World War having these in their pockets and they were

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they were taken prisoner and the pens being well known and respected as a consequence of people

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finding them. I don't know how much of that is true. It's hard to find a good definitive story

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on this. The pens were made in vast numbers I think and they're still available. They're called

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old new stock which I thought was a very strange thing until I realized what they mean is it's

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an old pen that's never been used and it's just as it was manufactured and you can still

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buy them and the problem with them is that I don't know whether time or maybe a little bit of misuse

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along the way or maybe the manufacturing process means that the quality can be a little bit

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variable. My son actually bought 12 of these things in a job lot from eBay and he went to to the

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trouble of fixing this particular one so it worked better and since then I've bought a couple myself.

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They cost around 12 pounds each on eBay. They have to be quite selected though some people will charge

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you a lot for them and I've learned a bit about how to tune the nib so that it's not scratchy

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and delirious the ink properly. So they can be quite good to have. They're a really nice

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first use pen but you have to be careful of this thing. So my next one is the pilot MR. I bought this

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from Amazon July this year 2015 just because I'd heard about it and thought it would be nice to

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give it a try. I'd heard a lot of comments from people on the internet and also there was a

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discussion about this on Gennew social that I frequent from time to time. It's in Europe it's called

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the MR but in the US it's called a metropolitan and it's well regarded as a good value first time

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pen. It's all the one I've got is all black with a slightly shiny bit around the middle of it.

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I think it's all metal. I think it's mostly metal anyway. The barrel and the cap are metal.

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It's got a medium nib but it's a Japanese pen so it means it's actually quite fine.

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It's a cartridge pen this particular one. It takes pilot branded cartridges but it also takes

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international sized cartridges. There's a converter that supposedly works that I've not tried it.

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I've written down details of what it's called and I also have a waterman's pen which I won't

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talk about here but I've got some ink cartridges for it and I tried one of those in the pen.

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It's much longer than the international size one so it's a good capacity and it works absolutely

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fantastic. So my writing sample is with the black ink, waterman, intense black. It's the name

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of the ink. It's a really nice pen. It's a really good writer, smooth, pleasant to use and it's

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around 15 pounds in the UK. I'm told that it's some sort of price in dollars in the states so

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it's a fantastic pen for very little money. Pilot, the pilot corporations are Japanese,

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pen manufacturer and they make a quite a range of pens. Some of which are pretty expensive.

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This is right at the bottom of their range but it's still an excellent pen.

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So my last one is from a French company. I bought this in August 2015 and the company's

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called, it looks like Jay Herbin but it's pronounced with a French way, Jay Erban and they're mostly

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known for their inks but they'd started this year selling a fountain pen and a ballpoint pen.

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The ballpoint pen is refillable with fountain pen ink which is interesting. So I bought the ballpoint

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from my daughter because she likes to use that sort of pen and she likes it. She didn't but my son

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was very keen so he's got it now but I kept the fountain pen for myself. It's a transparent

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imagine polycarbonate type of thing. It's only small. It's about four inches

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that the barrel and the nib is four inches so without the cap. You have to put the cap on the end

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which is called posting. I've mentioned that in my terminology. You have to do that to make it a

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reasonable size. It has a fine nib and it's as I said transparent pen. Cost only eight pounds

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and the roller ball was five pounds. It takes international size cartridges. There's

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two sizes in the international range of small and large and it takes the small ones because

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it's so tiny but I have found a converter for it. They haven't used it yet and the

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converters made by Monte Verde. It's called a mini ink converter. Just in case you

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this interests you and you want to follow it through. The pen is really nice to use it right

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as well. I bought some Ajayaban ink cartridges to use with it and tried out a reddish color

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which again has a French name which you might imagine. Tardith which I think means

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fire or fire or fire. I think it's meant to be sort of terracotta actually so it's like a sort

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of fireplace or something. I don't know. It's just me guessing. So Ajayaban is quite a well-known

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and old company so some interesting. They made more pens I'd be interested in trying them out.

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It writes really nicely. As I mentioned at the beginning I've got the a case for my pens. I bought

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it on eBay. It's nothing very much actually but it's okay. It'll take 12 pens in total and I

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have been known to carry them around several of them around in this thing but it's not a thing

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I do often. Mostly when I meet friends or also in the fan events we can compare notes.

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So what did you buy recently? Oh I got one of these. Oh that's amazing. I should get one of those

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those types of meetings. I told you I'm a geek. I'd like to find something better for storing

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pens in a wooden box or something like that but at least having a case let me

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join the Watson My Toolkit series. I wanted if you yourself might be interested in

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becoming a phantom pen user. It's something at least it's worth having a try at just to see how

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you get on with it. So if you're interested I've listed a few pens that you might want to

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do by to experiment with. The first one is from pilot and it's called the V pen or the V4.

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I think it might vary depending on where you buy it. It's Japanese pen again. It's a disposable

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pen. It's got a medium size steel nib and it's available in multiple colors. It has a

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large ink capacity or run quite a long time in the UK it costs around four pounds. In the United

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States I'm told and possibly other countries it's known as the Vacity. I have one of these

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and I really like it. It's lovely pen. You can tell it's not high quality but it's great for

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it's a good writer and it always writes and it's very reliable and it's a good thing to have

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I have a red one which I use for marking up things or highlighting stuff. The other one is similar

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to this is from a company called Platinum, another Japanese company and it's called the Preppy.

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This is a clear polycarbonate pen. The pilot one was not completely clear. It's refillable this

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one with a proprietary cartridge and there are several pen colors and ink colors available.

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There is an adaptor I'm told. I've not tried this myself to allow it to use international

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small cartridges and there's also three nib sizes, medium-fine and extra fine. In the UK this

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pen costs around three pounds but I've not actually bought one of these to try it so I can't

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come in on it myself but it's well spoken of and if you're interested it's probably a good

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starter pen to just try out and then there's the J-R-Ban transparent phantom I've just mentioned

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which is around eight pounds and then there's the pilot MR or metropolitan again which I've

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discussed already and that's around fifteen dollars in the US. So there's four pens that you might

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want to try out just to see whether you enjoy writing with a phantom pen. Now the other factors

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that I haven't mentioned much about is this recording could go on far too long if I did is the

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joint subjects of paper and ink so I've made some references to paper and ink in relation to writing

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and phantom pens. There are some good articles on Wikipedia. Getting the right sort of paper

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good quality for using with a phantom pen it's important because it allows the pen to write

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smoothly and also it mustn't be too absorbent otherwise the ink will sing in the paper and

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make a sort of fuzzy mess as it's soaks into the fibers which is referred to as feathering and

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if you've got good quality paper then you can write on both sides of it so if you're writing notes or

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something you keep in a journal or a diary then you don't want to turn the page after writing

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on it and find that you can read what was on the other side from the back. So I tend to go for

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an 8GSM paper. GSM is a term from the paper world grams per square meter so it's a measure of the

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paper density. That's not all that's not the entire parameter list for for water or makes up

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good paper because some printer papers and copy of papers can be 8GSM and yet they tend to be

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very absorbent so you need to look around for good quality writing paper. I've actually found

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this is a UK thing probably there's a range called Oxford which sells books and

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writing pads and refills for ring binders and some of their papers in their academic range are

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excellent for using with a phantom pen. I could go into a lot more detail here but I won't unless

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unless you ask me to but for now I'll stop. So just to finish off with speaking about inks

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there's a huge number of these things with a vast range of colours and it's quite important to choose

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inks made for phantom pens because there are others which are made for dip pens and maybe drawing

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pens and that type of thing that if you put in into a phantom pen we'll clog it because they

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they tend to dry out and they contain materials that will damage the inside of the pen.

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A good basic ink made by a pen or ink company such as Parker or Waterman it's good choice

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to use to start things off. If you have access to the noodlers ink range then those are also

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very good value. There's a very large market in phantom pen inks. Some of them can be remarkably

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expensive a big bottle especially a fancy glass bottle can cost you as much as a good quality pen

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which seems dark to me I'm not buying those. I have discovered recently that some of the sellers

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in the UK there's a brand in the UK called Diamine which is a good quality ink that's not massively

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expensive. They sell a small sample bottle which you can you can buy just to sample inks you know

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so you you'll get maybe years worth of of use out of such a small bottle I forget the size of them

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but you can sometimes get these and then you can decide on a colour that you like and then buy more

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of it in the larger bottle perhaps which is a better value so it's another large subject that

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I'll be you for now. So I hope that wasn't too geeky for you and you've found it interesting so that's it

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bye now.

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